Pat #3: Hitting Close to Home

I really haven’t had time to breathe since the beginning of the semester. My energy reserves are starting to wear thin and it is showing in my work. I just need a “watch 12 hours of House, smother everything in cheese, not change out of my pajamas, or answer my phone” kind of days. To be perfectly honest, it has been a bleak couple of weeks and staying optimistic is becoming quite difficult.

Last night I got a phone call around 11 p.m. which sadly enough, is about two hours past my usual bed time. I debated answering the call, but because most of my friends know that I go to bed before the sun goes down, I assumed it was pretty important. Ronnie, my best friend since the eighth grade was sobbing on the other end.

Ronnie has been my constant support over the years. For better or worse, she has always been by my side. We both went to State for our undergraduate degrees and studied the same subjects. Our fork in the road was Ronnie’s decision to pick up a second major, causing her to graduate a semester later than me.

I jumped right into graduate school and Ronnie spent over a year looking for a job. That’s right, a year. A bright, talented woman with not one, but two baccalaureate degrees could not find a job. I was so excited for her when she finally found a decent job at a newspaper in October.

Last night the recession became a terrifying reality. Ronnie, defeated and scared called to tell me that The Newspaper decided to cut 7% of their budget (for the second time in the past two years). Since her job happens to be towards the bottom of the Newspaper Prestige Scale*, it isn’t difficult to figure out that her job will be included in the 7% of cuts.

I feel so guilty. A few months ago, I was actually jealous. She was starting her adult life and I was still in school. And now, my best friend might be losing her first full-time job at the age of 23. “You are so lucky that you’re in graduate school. Higher education is one of those recession-proof jobs,” she said.

And so I told her about hiring freezes, budget cuts, and “anticipated” job openings. My future could be just as uncertain as hers. Neither of us could think of anything to say that would make us feel better. And so we sat in silence, both terrified and uncertain about our futures.

"It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours." - Harry S. Truman

*The Newspaper Prestige Scale is fictional. For someone who has a tremendous amount of talent (and two degrees), Ronnie deserves better than the Obit-writing, coffee-grabbing, status that she currently holds.